As one North Carolina basketball legend prepares to make his NASCAR ownership debut, another is trying to string consistency together.

2021 JTG Daugherty Driver Chart
Driver	Car No.	Crew Chief	Primary Sponsor(s)
Ryan Preece	37	Trent Owens	Kroger
Ricky Stenhouse Jr.	47	Brian Pattie	Kroger/NOS Energy Drink

History

A University of North Carolina basketball legend, a mid-1980s NBA Draft pick, and a star from a 1996 hoops comedy is looking to succeed in NASCAR.

We are, of course, talking about Brad Daugherty, a five-time All-Star with the Whoopi Goldberg film Eddie on his filmography.

Daugherty, the top pick of the 1986 NBA Draft, has been involved in NASCAR since his basketball retirement. Among his first racing endeavors was ownership in the early days of the NASCAR Craftsman (now Camping World) Truck Series. Future star Kevin Harvick was among his drivers, as was the late Kenny Irwin Jr. (who won two races during the 1997 campaign). Daugherty has united with Tad Geschickter and his wife Jodi to form JTG Daugherty racing in 2009, separating from a partnership that originally included Wood Brothers Racing. The team’s lone win to date came in 2014, when A.J. Allmendinger went to victory lane at Watkins Glen.

2020 in Review

The mid-budget squad had a bit of a roller-coaster season. Stenhouse, a two-time Xfinity Series champion, took over the No. 47 Chevrolet from Chris Buescher (ironically occupying Stenhouse’s old ride at Roush Fenway Racing) and got things off to a good start by winning the pole at the Daytona 500 (the team’s first pole since Allmendinger won two in 2015). He led 24 laps of the Great American Race (only Brad Keselowski and winner Denny Hamlin led more), but he fell back to a 20th-place finish. While Stenhouse struggled to maintain consistency, he did recover to finish third in the ensuing race at Las Vegas, two more at Charlotte and Talladega. The latter race saw Stenhouse miss out on a win (and the playoff spot that came with it) by .007 seconds to Ryan Blaney. In either case, Stenhouse’s trio of top five finishes was the best from a JTG Daugherty car since Marcos Ambrose earned four in the team’s debut year.

Things weren’t as bright in the No. 37 stall belonging to Ryan Preece. Taking over a car that Buescher drove into a top 20 standings finish in 2019, Preece endured a brutal summer. Despite starting on the pole in two races at Darlington and Pocono (via 20th-place finishes when the lineup was determined by inverting the top 20), Preece failed to capitalize. July was particularly tough, as Preece finished last in three consecutive races before enduring a particularly scary wreck at Kansas. The Connecticut native did manage to end things on a somewhat brighter note, recording top 20 finishes in eight of the ten playoff races (his best being a 9th at Bristol).

Meet the Drivers

Ryan Preece

Experience: 3rd full season
Career Cup Victories: 0
2020 finish: 29th
Best standings finish: 26th (2019)

Preece is in a precarious position in 2021, as his No. 37 doesn’t own a charter and has sponsorship for 24 of 36 races. He is thus considered an “Open” car, one that could well miss races entirely if he isn’t careful. So far, he’s responded to the pressure well. Preece was the fastest car amongst Open competitors during Wednesday single-car qualifying session and he later finished a career-best fifth in his Bluegreen Vacations Duel race.

“You show up every single week trying to get the most out of your equipment. So that doesn’t change anything about what I’m doing. Our approach for Daytona is the same as it has been every year, except I think we’ll be a little more aggressive than we have been in years past when it comes to stages,” Preece said of his 2021 outlook. “We’re going to continue week after week and hopefully everything is there, we’re having a solid season and everything comes together.”

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. 

Experience: 9th full season
Career Cup Victories: 2 (last: Daytona, summer 2017)
2020 finish: 24th
Best standings finish: 13th (2017)

We’ve seen Stenhouse steal playoff slots before through superspeedway racing. Wins at both Talladega and Daytona during the 2017 season…thus far the only wins of his Cup career…allowed him to start the 2017 playoffs in the No. 8 seed. He has had chances to get back to victory lane, but fate has been no friend to him.

But Stenhouse saw progress throughout his first year in the No. 47 and was particularly pleased that the team was almost entirely held together from last season to this one.

“We all believe in each other. I feel like this is a really good group of guys that are working on our race cars,” Stenhouse said. “We all believe that we under-performed, as far as the finishes go and the year-end points results. But there were a lot of highs, I feel like, with the speed of our cars when we showed up at the race track.”

“On my side, I need to clean up my pit road mistakes because I feel like I can count on a full hand that I felt like I gave up some really good opportunities to run well inside the top-10 at some of these race tracks from having a pit road penalty. So, for us, I like that we have the same group.”

Outlook

For Preece, the key will be competing in as many races as he can, to treat this season as if it’s an elevator pitch for new sponsors and potentially new teams as well. Stenhouse could well steal a playoff spot in one of the superspeedway events, but getting the No. 47 into the top ten on a consistent basis would be an admirable landmark to reach.

Geoff Magliocchetti is on Twitter @GeoffJMags